She peeled the top of her uniform off her sweat- and blood-soaked skin, gritting her teeth as her shoulder pulled painfully from the movement. She hissed through her teeth and pulled the arm out. The black tank top she wore underneath was soaked through in sweat.
In the new Blackbird, she'd sat pulling at her gloved fingers, trying to hide their shaking while Kitty quietly lost her wits. Bobby sat with his eyes clenched. Jubes had stared out the window and cried silently, heaving in shaky breaths. Storm and Warren piloted and used it as a distraction, while Gambit mumbled irately to himself. Logan sat, his arms crossed, staring at nothing the entire way home.
She had trouble getting her second arm out, the tears that puddled in her eyes making it hard to see. She hadn't undone her glove and it was catching, too tight to fit over her wrist unsnapped. Regardless, she yanked savagely, determined to get it off.
“Damned...” yank, “Piece of...” yank, “Shit.” Yank, yank, yank. She sucked in a sob.
“Marie...” She lifted her head to see him standing at the doorway, still in his suit. His arms were crossed and he looked so much older than he had ten hours ago. She probably did too. He pushed off the side of the doorframe, softly grabbing her wrist and gently undoing the hated snap.
He turned her around and helped her peel the rest of the suit off, carefully avoiding her skin. She stood there, in just black panties and a tank top, silver chain twinkling in the soft light and it would have been embarrassingly erotic if it hadn't been so sad. He straightened up and moved as if to brush her cheek, but diverted at the last second to her hair. “Get a shower and get some sleep.”
She nodded and then shook her head vehemently when she thought better of it.
“I can't. I can't sleep. I can't dream.”
He sighed and pulled her into his chest. He sat on the edge of the bed, and then pulled her down to lie next to him. They were probably staining the duvet but she couldn't really care. She curled into his chest and quietly sobbed away the memories.
Jubes, Kitty and she had been skirting the perimeter of the woods in the dim twilight. The whole team had been in a fight with a mobile holding camp for mutants. The camp had been armed with military trained men, so they'd had a hell of a battle. She'd been limited to Logan's healing and senses during the fight, as there were no mutants to be found.
The information they'd gotten should have placed at least 50 mutants in the camp trailers. She'd been rared up to try a few. She castigated herself for her disappointment -- she shouldn’t want it so much, this taste of other mutations.
Trained to rendezvous back at the jet in their separate groups, the three girls carefully climbed their way through bushes, Rogue using Logan's absorbed sense of smell to get them back. It was late January and so cold her lips were tinged blue. When the smell of rot started to burn her nose-hairs, she'd been confused. The further they moved back towards the jet, the worse it got.
“Ugh, damn!” As they moved forward, the smell become so potent she could barely stand it and it was getting in the way of the Blackbird's engine smell. She wasn't as good at distinguishing scents as Logan. Years of practice had trained him on how to smell minor differences she couldn't yet specify. Engine fuel was easy to smell. Its acrid scent never failed to catch her attention.
“What's the matter?” Kitty quietly asked.
“Can't you smell it?” Rogue gagged.
“I can,” Jubilee said, sniffing and cringing. “Smells like a dead rat.” They followed it for a few hundred feet, Kitty finally catching a whiff. “Pungent,” Jubes coughed.
Rogue eyes were watering. “What is it?” Kitty was covering her nose, kicking at the brush around her.
Rogue tried to find the trail, stopping twice to breath in through her mouth to stop the vomit from rising up her throat. “We're close.” She looked around, trying to see in the dark past the bushes. Kitty stepped over a rock and stumbled down, letting out a small squeak.
“Kitty!” She and Jubes leaped over the bushes to get to where she'd fallen.
“I'm OK,” she called. “Only a ten or so foot drop. Umph...mostly sloped. Let me get my footing and...” She fell quiet. The two of them pushed away some debris to look down when Kitty's scream had them jumping out of their skin.
“Kitty!” Jubes called, followed by Rogue. They scrambled to rip out the shrubs to be able to pull her up. She was screaming and crying when they could finally see over the ledge. They could hear her clawing at the side of a ditch, begging to get out.
“Jubes, grab my legs, quick!”
She didn't weigh very much, but Jubes didn't either so they struggled to pull Kitty up using rocks as leverage. Kitty was frantically crying, making it more difficult to pull her out. Rogue grunted and strained, feeling her shoulder scream painfully. When they finally dragged Kitty over the loosely packed edge, she crawled back against a tree, covering her face and shaking her head back and forth.
Jubes, breathing heavily from the exertion stood shakily. “Chica, what happened?”
When Kitty wouldn't reply, Rogue turned to the ditch, which now, she noticed, looked to have been man-made. She looked over the edge, but the dark night cast everything in shadows. She thought she saw...
“Jubes?” She motioned her friend, now crouching next to Kitty soothing her, over.
“Can you run a current down there or something?”
Jubes blinked and shrugged.
“Won't give us a great view but we can try.”
She brought her hands up and electric currents ran between them. She grew the currents, widening her hands and stance as she poured more power in. Squeezing her hands closer suddenly, the pops and cracks of electricity contracted. She pushed out and down, and the currents dashed across the ditch, back and forth before they died off and the light with them. It gave them only a few seconds of light.
A hand came up and clapped around her strangled cry. Her own hand. Jubes grabbed her arm and turned her head away as the images registered. They'd found the missing mutants.
XX
She woke up warm. Curled against a mass of firm softness, as odd as that sounded. Her face was buried in flannel and it felt divine. She blinked and breathed deeply. God, her sheets even smelled like him.
She cuddled closer and felt the familiar rub of denim on her leg. Now, that was slightly off. She pulled her head back and...there was Logan, gazing back at her calmly. Wasn't that any girl's dream come true?
He raised his hand and brushed hair back away from her eyes.
“Hey.”
She blinked. Somewhere in the middle of the night, he'd gotten up from her bed, gone off to take a shower, dressed in jeans, socks, gloves and a flannel shirt and then calmly climbed right back into bed with her. It gave her all sorts of ideas. She could feel the blush rise up her neck and face.
“Hey.” She was at a loss for any other words.
“Feelin' better?” He looked worried. Better than what? The previous day's events slowly came back to her and she felt her stomach knot up.
She buried her face in his shirt again. “Not enough.”
He sighed and pulled her closer. “I'm sorry you saw those things, darlin'.”
She sighed. “I'm not.”
He pulled back and looked at her, searching her eyes for an explanation. She pushed back into his chest, mumbling her words.
“I”d rather know those kinda things go on. I don't want to be ignorant. I don't want to think the world works one way and it be the complete opposite, catching me one day by surprise and unprepared.”
He nodded and kissed the top of her head. “Like your parents.”
She nodded again. “Another lost cause.”
She took a deep breath and pushed to sit up. He seemed put out at the idea and she laughed awkwardly.
“You stayed with me all night?” She ran her hands through her hair and adjusted her tank top. The same one from last night. Ugh. “Must of smelled nice,” she muttered.
He sat up behind her as she attempted to reach for a robe. His gloved hand grabbed her bare arm, pulling her around to face him. He looked different. He opened his mouth to say something, and then clamped it shut, apparently thinking better of it.
He sighed and smiled softly. “Take a shower, get cleaned up, I'll meet you downstairs for breakfast.” She nodded and followed his movements as he climbed out of bed and padded to the door, closing it behind him.
XXX
It took a couple of weeks for everyone to start getting back to their normal routines. Kitty had gone back home for a while, trying to separate nightmare from reality. She came back from it though. A little more jaded, but still the same sweet Kitty.
None of the three younger X-women had been included in the discussions that revolved around dealing with the fallout from that night. Storm, Wolverine, Angel, Iceman, and Gambit took on the job of collecting. Hank spent days identifying and returning bodies back to their families. Those who had none were buried in a local cemetery.
By the very beginning of April, eventually, a sense of normalcy returned, as it always did after tragedy. Training picked up again and so did life. They went out on missions now and then. Sometimes only some of them, sometimes all, depending on the situation. They worked, and studied, and taught the younger students.
Gambit flirted mercilessly with Rogue. She was flattered. What woman wouldn't be? But she quietly turned him down time after time.
“Gambit want to know why 'dis pretty bird so difficult to catch?”
She laughed. “Maybe 'cause I don't belong in a cage, Remy.”
“Eehh,” he said knowingly. “Perhaps not in de Gambit’s cage..but maybe in with de Wolverine, non?”
She balked at his assumption and laughed. “You're reachin' pretty far there, Remy.”
“Non, Remy think not.” He leaned back reflectively. She'd nervously bit her lip and walked out. She wasn't comfortable with the conversation at all. She did not like the thought that she had been that transparent.
Still, they hung out some, laughing about randomness. She developed a friendship with him like she had with Jubes. He had a sense of humor that made her laugh and she enjoyed their time together.
In contrast, her time with Logan was growing tense. Since that night more than two months ago, when he'd slept in her room, he'd hardly spent more than fifteen minutes with her at any given time. She started to feel as if he were purposefully ignoring her. She would catch him leaving a room just as she was walking in, others in the room looking back at her in awkwardness. She would smile, chat, and then go up to her room and hide under covers.
One morning, when she'd shown up for their daily sparring session, she had been surprised to find Kitty and Jubes there too. He'd muttered something about the three of them needing to practice throwing their meager weight around, and that had been the end of individual sessions with Logan. She'd cried herself to sleep that night.
XXX
She and Remy became good friends though, and he served as one more distraction from her misery over Logan. Remy flirted endlessly in public, but with a carefree nature she enjoyed. In private, he confided a growing attraction to 'Ro that made her smile.
She'd give him advice on topics he could bring up with ‘Ro, and he in turn volunteered himself as a test dummy for power hits. He was getting the short end of the stick in her opinion.
They were down in the sparring room one late morning in May, before team practice. He'd been showing her some crafty moves he'd learned down in New Orleans and she was trying to perfect the graceful movements. The intricate twists and turns were dizzying in their complexity, but they worked well in situations where you had to quietly take out your enemy.
“You and Remy, chère, we don't have claws to slit throats. Eh? We have to find different ways.”
She'd made a bad turn on one combination and had ended up with her back pressed up against his thighs, her arms twisted half off, a dulled practice knife to her throat. She probably looked ridiculous in the position, she certainly felt ridiculous.
“Uncle!” she laughed.
“You two finished with the foreplay or should we leave?” Jubes’s voice.
Remy dropped his hands away gracefully and let go. She flopped to the floor with a snort. She stood and looked to see Jubes and Logan standing at the doorway, the others chatting back by the locker room.
Jubes had a smirk on her face. She snapped her gum, gazed momentarily at Logan and moved into the room with a hearty chuckle. Logan stood there, arms crossed over his chest, staring at Remy with those predatory eyes.
“Logan, ready to spar?” She was gonna try one of Remy's moves on him. She got all excited at the idea of catching him off guard and laying him on his back. In more ways than one, she thought devilishly. She shook her head and tugged her gloves on more securely.
His eyes switched from Remy to her and she had to catch her breath. They were wild and dark and downright feral. She felt her throat go dry. At some point in time, those eyes had started to make her stomach knot in delicious ways. It had been difficult not to have physical reactions around him. Right now it was damn near impossible.
“Not today.” He switched his gaze back to Remy. “I'm thinkin' I'll take a go at Gumbo here.”
XXX
She pounded up the stairs behind him, fuming.
“Logan,” she called. She'd stormed out of the practice room after him, ready to read him the riot act and possibly break his jaw. Whichever happened first, happened first.
The spar between he and Remy had turned startlingly violent. They'd pounded into each other with a ferocity she only knew in battle. Pete, freshly back from his year at college, had finally split them up by sheer force, Logan straining to get another punch in. He had been the instigator. After he'd pinned Remy in a choke-hold, he'd thrown him against a wall, shattering glass everywhere. Remy's temper had flared and they'd flown at each other.
She'd stared at him in disbelief as he'd stormed off, slamming doors the whole way up to his room like a petulant child. After a few moments of hesitation and checking on Remy, she'd jumped up and gone after him.
He'd made it to his room, so she pushed through and slammed it shut. “What was that?”
He was in the bathroom, splashing water on his face. He looked up into the mirror to see her reflection. “Little shit was gettin' on my last nerve.”
“So you threw him into a glass wall?” She asked incredulously.
“Maybe he'll learn,” he muttered as he walked back into the bedroom.
“To what? Fly?” She couldn't believe how he was acting.
He threw his towel aside and glared at her. “To stop sniffin' around you like you’re some dog in heat ready to be mounted!”
She flinched and took a step back.
“Logan, what...”
“He barks up every Goddamn tree, Marie.”
Huh? “Remy and 'Ro...”
“Yeah. I know,” he sneered. “They've been going at it for weeks now. But he's got his mangy hands all over you!”
She felt a blush of anger spread down her neck. She snapped. “What's it matter to you what I let him do with his hands, Logan?”
He crossed the distance between them, grabbing her hips and pushing her back up against the wall. She almost tripped over a pair of boots and had to grab his forearms to keep from falling. His body was suddenly flush with hers and she looked up to see his eyes flaring with anger and desire and...Oh, God.
“Because I'm the only fuckin' man who should be touchin' you like that.” He ground out the words, making liquid fire trail down her spine.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Here's the next chapter. AAAAAND it's BETA read by the fantastic doctorg, so you KNOW it's in great condition ready to be sold!
Chapter End Notes:
Evil Laugh....